Who wouldn't want a job like Vanna White's?

LAS VEGAS - Only three play the game of high-stakes hangman, but millions watch it. On an August afternoon at the Venetian hotel, Wheel of Fortune offers the most riveting game in the joint.

LAS VEGAS — Only three play the game of high-stakes hangman, but millions watch it.

On an August afternoon at the Venetian hotel, Wheel of Fortune offers the most riveting game in the joint.

Sixteen hundred fans, like sardines in the bleachers, have come to watch as the great wheel giveth cars, cash and trips to Antigua.

They have also come to see the mistress of letters, America’s favorite wordsmith, work her magic on the puzzle board.

Here we are at the bonus round. The category is “phrase.” The puzzle looks like a sand trap on a golf course.

With 10 seconds on the clock, the contestant is baffled.

“Oh, um, it’s .?.?.?,” she pleads, until the answer dribbles off her tongue just in the nick of?. ?.?.

The buzzer beeps. The crowd gasps. She won, right? After 30 seasons of Wheel of Fortune, the hosts aren’t sure.

Pat Sajak runs offstage toward a bank of computers.

Vanna White — wearing a sparkling fuchsia gown with a thigh-high slit — takes a mic and darts toward the crowd with the swiftness of a mountain cat. Now, off camera, the usually silent hostess does something that would shock the 30 million viewers who watch her each week.

She speaks.

For seven minutes.

“Sometimes, things are too close and we have to check the tape,” White informs the crowd in a honeyed Carolina accent. “But this gives me some time to talk with you folks!”

White keeps talking — about blackjack or shoe collections — until the contestant onstage learns that she lost $50,000. White then consoles her; claps anyway; and changes gowns for the next game, when a lucky someone might win the Camaro.

After 30 years on Wheel of Fortune, who Vanna White is isn’t entirely clear.

Officially, the 56-year-old co-host is the letter turner, the name for something she no longer does because the puzzle board is computerized. Unofficially, White has been everything: touchstone; mother goddess; laughingstock; author; spokeswoman; exercise guru; model; philanthropist; and object of desire, envy or ridicule, depending on your taste for sequins.

She has held the same job since she was just 26 — one with little path for career development. Despite aging, she has maintained her status as America’s girlish cheerleader and become the longest-

running female co-host on syndicated television.

She has begun her 31st season on the show. No one thought she would last this long. Vanna — the person, not the persona — didn’t even think she’d make it through the audition.

“I didn’t think I had a chance,” White recalled. “The girl I was competing against was the complete opposite of me: poised and brunet and perfect. I felt like I was just this girl from North Myrtle Beach who was — I don’t know. I had no confidence.”

Merv Griffin, the game-show mogul who created both Jeopardy! and Wheel, had other plans for her.

She remembers little about her audition, only that she jumped up and down when she got the call the day before Thanksgiving in 1982.

Sajak, who has hosted the show since 1981, originally told Griffin he thought White was too green, too nervous. Griffin didn’t care. He saw something timeless in her, and America would come to see it, too.

“Vanna’s genuine,” Sajak, 66, said backstage before a taping.

Forty-some countries have licensed Wheel of Fortune. Most of the versions have taut and toned women turning or touching letters a la Vanna White. Generations of critics have quibbled with White’s silent presence, her sequins, her antiquated role. In the ’80s, Adweek said she typified “the bimbosity” of American culture, and satirist Russell Baker quipped, “I refuse to learn what Vanna White is.”

But Wheel has long played up the absurdity of her role. Indeed, it playfully mocks her silence at live tapings, where Sajak often teases her for not having a microphone.

White chalks up everything to the absurdity of her job:

“I’ve dealt with criticism by making fun of my job. It is what it is. I’ll be the first to make fun of it. It’s funny.”

The single mother doesn’t talk much about her enviable work schedule. Wheel tapes only 35 days a year, five to six shows a day, mostly in a 160-person studio in Culver City, Calif. Her contract, estimated to be worth millions of dollars, gives her the freedom to dabble in real estate and crocheting, hobbies she has since turned into business ventures.

Wheel has endured, remaining one of the most-watched syndicated shows. The flashy carnival wheel might seem dated or hokey to some, but many people still watch.

“We’re kind of a throwback,” Sajak said.

White, as usual, agreed with Sajak.

“We’re like vanilla ice cream,” she said. ”You can have maple-nut ice cream or chocolate fudge ice cream, but it all starts with the vanilla. You never get tired of vanilla.”